


If your right hand offends you (cut it off)

by Sassaphrass



Series: I hold with those who Favour Fire [2]
Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Angelic Twins, Angels, Anger, Brotherhood, Drabble, Gabriel is very Angry, Gabriel's POV, Gen, Introspection, Love, Spoilers for the Flood, Twins, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 20:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3460469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel's brother once burned so bright. </p><p>Now he doesn't shine at all. </p><p>If Gabriel needs to burn the world to relight that fire he will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If your right hand offends you (cut it off)

Gabriel remembers a time when he hadn't always understood his twin. When Michael, though beloved beyond all others (save their father), had seemed a wonderfully incomprehensible creature. _More_ wonderful for his incomprehensibility.

 

Michale was the only brash and tempestuous being to ever find favour with Gabriel. No, wild, dangerous untameable things had ever been his brother's purvey, not his own. Gabriel's favour had always fallen to the deceptively strong. Those like William Wheele, whose strength was so veiled in quiet, and submission that the spine of steel and heart of iron went unnoticed by all who knew him.

 

Mary had been like that too, Gabriel remembered. Ah, but she'd been strong! Stronger than any of the others. She had lived and lived well.

 

They'd always had favourites, Some more than others, Michael in particular always seemed to have one human or another whose fate he was trying to usher in (at least since the days of the Flood). But, those they favoured were ever as different as they were themselves.

 

 

Michael favoured Gideon and David. Gabriel whispered to Samuel and showed himself to Mary. Uriel loved Solomon, and cast her smile on the ill-tempered Socrates. Raphael favoured Elijah, Hippocrates, and the Nazarene.

 

And so it followed. Michael favoured the bold, the defiant, those who no matter the odds refused to balk or waver. Foolish humans, but brave and true. Not that Michael's favour always brought them joy. Gabriel remembers how his brother had watched the little French girl burn- dry eyed.

 

Gabriel missed his brother's whims, and ever changing mood. His violent delights and vulnerable sorrows. This calm did not suit his brother, Michael had been made to burn brighter than any save the Morningstar. But, sometimes it seemed he no longer burned at all anymore. It had been so long since Gabriel had been able to cast his eyes upon his brother and delight in what he saw.

 

Too long.

 

Far too long.

 

It reminded him of the lion that that fool David Wheele had kept. A lion bereft of savannah, of pride- is not what God meant it to be.

 

God had not meant Michael to be a serene, unfeeling creature, and that had always delighted Gabriel. He loved Michael, who was ever so raw in his emotions. As quick to laugh, and cry as he was to anger.

 

Gabriel remembered how strongly the echo of Michael's emotions used to reverberate in his own soul-  beautiful songs of joy and sorrow. But it had been a long time indeed.

 

These humans thought to keep Michael as caged as that lion, and saw him as even less than it. For a lion as least is respected, it has a mind and knows loyalty- Lions can love. But angels? Gabriel knows what angels are to the humans, nothing but knives, or guns. Unthinking, unfeeling weapons, forged by God yes, but just as mindless as any forged by man.

 

Gabriel gritted his teeth.

 

Oh, he hated. How he hated them. He _burned_ with it.

 

He understood Michael's qualms. He understood why his brother would not stand by and let them be slaughtered, as they ought to be.

 

He remembered the terrible pain and grief Michael had felt after he was punished for the Flood. It had rung through Gabriel's soul like the pure unending chime of a great bell, a great echoing peal of misery and pain.

 

He had tried to ease it. That had even been his habit with his brother, when he ranged too far, felt too deeply, or was too wild it fell to Gabriel to soothe. To remind him that while the sky might beckon there was something to be said for safety and warmth of the ground. For the echo of your own heartbeat to reverberating through your twin's chest.

 

After the Flood that great bell rang on- though it had faded, as Michael had, from Gabriel's soul- the faintest echo of it had still been heard. Until the moment Michael had faded away to nothing, except in the very centre of Gabriel's being, the place only their father could alter, where Gabriel could still feel his brother's beating heart.

 

He understands his brother as he is now. This serene and solemn being whose sadness Gabriel can still sometimes feel reverbeating in his own soul.

 

If your right hand offends you cut it off and Michael has cut away the parts of himself that offended, those parts which led to that bloody day on Babylonian sands.

 

Gabriel's nature meant he was unable to be angrry at their father, who is truly to blame. But, there must be some retribution for what has been done to his brother.

 

And so he turned his rage on the humans and the other angels.

 

He understood Michael as he _was_ now too.

 

He will kill them all and he will break the false serenity his brother has imprisoned himself in. _What could be more natural than death?_

 

Gabriel loves his brother, but he'd broken him once before and Michael had healed crooked. The only way to set it to right is to break him again.

Let Father return to that. To things returned to how they ought to have always been.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a reference to a quote from the Bible.  
> The Mary Gabriel refers to is the Virgin Mary. "The Nazarene" is a reference to Jesus which I used because Christianity's role in the Dominion verse is pretty uncertain at this point. Michael's favourites are all warriors mainly biblical but Joan of Arc is also mentioned. Uriel's are scholars and philosophers. Raphael's are healers. 
> 
> Gabriel's a vicious little shit but I don't think he sees himself that way, and that's maybe not like, his personality baseline? He's just soo angry and bitter. 
> 
> I don't know. Gabriel's head is a scary place, I had trouble getting into it. Comments feed my muse, without them it gets sad and wanders off to different fandoms.


End file.
